If you installed bccc with --user, you must add $HOME/.local/bin to your
$PATH.

You should now be able to run bccc by just typing bccc in a terminal emulator.
If it complain about a missing configuration file, congratulations, your
installation probably works :)

Uninstall

If you don't like bccc, you can uninstall it with pip3:

pip3 uninstall bccc

There may be some leftover files after that if you did a --user or develop
install: $HOME/.local/bin/bccc and /usr/bin/bccc. You will have to remove
them by hand.

At the moment easy_install does not seem to be capable of uninstalling
modules. So if pip3 is not available on your platform (and can't be installed
with easy_install3 pip), you will have to uninstall bccc by hand. On my
computer I can do it with these commands (as root):

This is due to these versions of setuptools/distribute not being correctly
updated for Python 3, where the execfile function is no longer available.

To fix it, edit your /usr/local/bin/bccc file and replace the
execfile(__file__) line with the following one:

exec(compile(open(__file__).read(), __file__, 'exec'))

Configuration

Before being able to use bccc, you will need to write a configuration file. The
easiest way to do so is actually to run bccc: if no configuration file is found,
it will ask for your credentials and create a configuration file using the
default one.

If you want to write the configuration file by hand, a good sample is available
in the Git repository, in bccc/bccc.conf.sample. You should copy it to
~/.config/bccc/bccc.conf, make sure it is only readable by you (chmod 600
~/.config/bccc/bccc.conf), and edit it to adjust your login and password.

This configuration file also contains the name of the theme used to render the
UI. Two sample themes are bundled with bccc: "dark" for terminals with a dark
background, and "light" for terminals with a light backgrounds. You can of
course write your own theme; feel free to share it here if you write a nice one!

Basic usage

Use the arrow keys to navigate through the interface.

Channels are displayed in the sidebar on the left, and their content in the
main panel on the right.

Channels are sorted by the date of the most recent item in the channel, i.e.
most recently updated channels first. Your personal channel will always be the
first one at the top.

The info bar (top of the main panel) has information about the active channel.

The status bar (bottom of the screen) displays relevant messages and can be
used for some inputs (see below).

When the sidebar is focused, you can browse through your subscribed channels.
Press Enter to select one and display it in the main panel.

You can go to an arbitrary channel by pressing g and typing the name of the
channel. When a post or reply in the main panel is focused, you can press G
to go to the author's channel. If you're not subscribed to this channel, its
current content will be displayed but it won't update automatically as new
content is posted.

In the main panel, you can start writing a new post by pressing n, or you
can start replying to the focused post/reply by pressing r. After you have
typed your message, press Alt+Enter to send it or Escape to cancel.

In the main panel, you can press = to force reloading the channel. This is
mostly useful when debugging, not for general usage :)

In the main panel, you can update the active channel title, status message and
description by typing t, s or d.

If the focused post/reply contain URLs, you can open them in your browser by
pressing o. This is especially useful for URLs longer than one line (other
URLs may be handled correctly by your terminal emulator).

You can delete the focused post/reply with the delete key.

Posts and replies in the active channel are grouped by thread: first the post,
then its replies in chronological order. Most recently updated threads are
listed first.

When new content is posted to the active channel, the corresponding thread will
be moved to the top, and the view will scroll so that you can see it. If it
can't scroll enough without hiding the currently focused item, a message will be
displayed in the status bar instead.

When new content is posted to an inactive channel, the channel will be moved to
the top of the sidebar and the number of unread items will be displayed next to
the channel name.

TODO

get PubSub notifications for unsubscribed channels displayed with g/G

better handling of Atom elements: should be done in SleekXMPP by registering
new stanza types

handle errors: private channels, posting forbidden, etc.

handle subscriptions, affiliations, moderators, etc.

persistence: save last known item ID for each channel in a database and tell
how many new items there are after a relaunch

Patches welcome!:)

Hacking

bccc is free software, available under the terms of the
Apache License, version 2.0. You
are encouraged to redistribute and modify it as you need. If you wish to
contribute to it (by reporting bugs, writing doc or submitting patches), the
easiest way is to use the GitHub page.

Contact

If you need help setting up, using or hacking bccc, feel free to contact me: